Some Ramen shop. The starters were decent. The soup was salty as fuck. impolyt would've gone mad. Unfortunately my first ramen experience, and not a good one at that.

Some Neapolitan place. Very enjoyable. Unfortunately, the pizza verace wasn't so good (very runny topping). The waiter apologized and said the guy usually making the pizza wasn't there today and the replacement mixed up the process (usually mozza -> sauce; he put the mozza on top of the sauce). Not sure whether that makes a lot fo sense, but given that the pizza from them is usually praised, I tend to believe him.

Pasta, fave, guanciale, cherry tomatoes. Really tasty. Pasta homemade (or housemade?) and cooked perfectly, great flavor combination. Only negative aspect might be that it was quite salty (guanciale, parmiggiano, ...) and that I would've preferred the fave to be peeled (though the vast majority of them was fine with them), if alone for the look.

Speaking of ramen, I'd avoided all the ramen places in Philly because they all seemed kinda janky. But we recently got a place that's an offshoot of a New York ramen joint and the buzz seemed pretty favorable. Went there today. Had their takoyaki and their standard house special ramen. I think I'm now pretty sure that I don't like takoyaki as an entire genre--fried batter, octopus, bonito flakes, and mayo-based sauce might all be decent things individually, but they're gross together. Fortunately, the ramen was surprisingly decent. Not too salty but still really rich. Place is BYOB too so next time I'll have a nice supply of beer with me.

Genevieve's mom used to call me up to ask what the appropriate thing was to get for various Jews that she knew when some gift was in order. I would tell her to get stuff like gefilte fish or obscure cantorial instruments. Gen and I used to laugh about it but I guess she forgot because last week she called me up to ask what a good gift would be for a Jewish Republican.